As the Kendal four-piece play their final shows – apparently departing on an amicable note – we assess the best and worst ways for a band to call it a day

Wild Beasts will bid farewell to the world on Saturday 17 February with a final show at the Hammersmith Apollo. This will absolutely, definitely, certainly be the last time they ever play music together – unless, a few years down the line, an enterprising promoter notices there’s a Wild Beasts-shaped hole in the market, and offers them an attractively sizeable sum to reunite – and their departure has been marked by a decorum befitting a group who always seemed to do things the right way.

Bands tend to split up for a limited number of reasons. Either they’re sick of each other, or they’re sick of not making enough money, or they’re sick of spending large parts of their life in transit. Virtually every split holds one of those reasons at its heart. What’s more interesting, perhaps, is the manner in which they split: the how, rather than the why. So how do bands break up?